Monday, July 21, 2008

ONE TEACHER’S IDIOMS

“Meaning Business”

As a boy, I often heard my mother say “I mean business”, an expression that would be suitable in my English classroom. When she used that expression, she meant she was serious about getting something accomplished (as in “clean up this mess, and I mean business”), which is exactly the attitude I want to promote among my teenage scholars. We don’t come together each day simply to indolently pass the time; it’s imperative that we “mean business” about further educating ourselves in the understanding and use of our language. Each of us must constantly embody the mind-set of my mother: be done with foolishness and achieve as much as possible. The word “business” refers to the occupation, work, or trade in which a person is engaged, a clear reminder of what should be happening in my classroom. I want the scholars to understand that we are English workers, not players – that we’re engaged in an occupation, not an amusement. We should feel free to say to each other, whenever necessary, something like, “I want to understand literature, and I mean business.” When we use the word “mean”, we are saying that we have a purpose or an intention – that we intend to learn whatever needs to be learned about reading, writing, listening, or speaking. We are serious about it. Of course, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of good cheer and heartiness in the classroom. In fact, meaning business in our study of English is perhaps the best way to develop an ambiance of cheerfulness in Room 2. After all, getting good things done (whether it’s cleaning up messes or mastering the use of gerunds) usually does bring at least a touch of inner merriment.

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"To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle." -- Walt Whitman

I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

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The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

Visitors to This Blog, June 12, 2009-

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom: "The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett